Big Bad Sad Boys
If the Gypsys is the band that started it all, then this is the band that started the Gypsys. This group, consisting of Simon Perry (guitar and vocal), Kerry Logan (guitar and vocal), Richard Brewer (drums), and Bevan Johnson (bass), is commonly referred to as the Big Bad Sad Boys, although in reality the group did not last long enough to have a name. The group's legacy, however, is that it birthed the song which ultimately allowed the Gypsys and the whole RockLords family to exist: The Blues Song. In early 1990, Hawera High School friends Simon and Kerry began to share musical ideas. Simon, the stronger musician and songwriter at the time, brought a mock-blues song to the high school drama group and the pair quickly shared it with the rest of the students, the song becoming a sort of cult classic. The next year, the pair polished the song and formed a band around it, drawing in friends Bevan to play bass, and Richard to play drums. The lack of maturity and different ideas from the foursome proved too much for the young band and they split shortly after. While the band never went on to achieve anything measurable collectively, their song went on to become an anthem for the Hawera High School 'Dramies'. It was later covered by the Gypsys and then officially recorded by Jamshed on their Jamshed and Purge album. The Blues Song would go on to become the song that would lay a foundation for hundreds after it. History Early Beginnings and the 'Dramies' At Hawera High School, during the early part of 1990, two fifth form (year 11) students, Simon Perry and Kerry Logan, met together to share musical ideas. They were both good friends and members of the high school drama group (unofficially called the 'Dramies'). Simon had been playing for several years already and was a confident songwriter and performer, while Kerry had only just begun learning the guitar in the start of that year and had not yet attempted to write anything. The pair were meeting at Simon's place one afternoon to share songwriting ideas and play music. During that time, Simon showed Kerry a couple of songs he was working, an unfinished song called O.N.E., and another simply called The Blues Song. The musical partnership between the two had begun. The pair became involved in the Hawera High School production of Man of Steel, a parady of Superman, and, as is usual with drama productions, the cast and crew became very close. During the rehearsals and eventual performance, the Dramies developed several routines, one such routine becoming the nightly singing of The Blues Song. Simon, with Kerry's help, began to play the song to the group and it caught on quickly. Throughout the final weeks of the production, the song was sung many times. Along with Simon and Kerry, there was Bevan Johnson, Paula Davies, and Justin Clegg. 1991 rolled along and the Dramies were preparing for another production, this time O' What A Lovely War. Reuniting during rehearsals, many of the old routines were reignited, including the singing of The Blues Song. The problem, however, was that the song had not been played since the previous year, and Simon and Kerry could only recall the first two of the original three verses. Looking to finish the song and give the narrative a firm direction, the pair wrote a third and fourth verse, this time looking to write down the lyrics. This time, the song complete, the Dramies were able to give full voice to it. Performing The Blues Song Shortly after the final performance of the school production, Simon and Bevan's english class were given an assignment in which they were allowed to present a song in anyway that they wanted. Looking for a novel way to do this, they came up with the idea of forming a band and playing The Blues Song for their class. The pair instantly asked their good friend and now co-author of the song, Kerry, and the three began to work out how to best present the track. It was decided that both Simon and Kerry would play guitar and sing, while they would teach Bevan the bass especially for the song. Missing a drummer, Kerry called on his friend Richard Brewer. Richard was a year younger and had been playing the drums for some time, having as much experience in musical performance as Simon, so was a good addition to the group. The foursome began practicing at Simon's house in preparation for the performance, adding Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall as so to have two songs. Early in the third school term of the year, somewhere in mid-October, the day arrived for the performance of The Blues Song to Simon and Bevan's english class. During the early part of the day, the band brought in their equipment and began to set up in the school hall. Helping to set up that day were three friends who acted as roadies; good friends Andrew McLoughlin, David Vink, and Shane Robinson. During the short final practice and sound check, Andrew and David, who had been living together due to David's parents moving back to the family home in Tokoroa, got into a mammoth argument over who was to sit in a particular chair on the stage, a vibrant disagreement that was made rather silly by the vast amount chairs about, although the event became one that the group laughed about on several occasions afterward. The time arrived for the performance and the english class arrived and sat in the first three rows. The band then performed The Blues Song followed by Another Brick in the Wall, the songs working out about as good as they had during their practices. Kerry, his first rock performance, got rather carried away leaping about the stage and hitting the cymbals with the head of his guitar. Afterward, the feedback of the two songs was fairly neutral, although Claire Crawshaw did comment that Kerry's leaping around was perhaps a bit over the top. Making the Band Official The high school performance out of the way, the band began to turn their attention to the future. They had enjoyed the experience so much, they decided to keep going and began looking for opportunities to play. Two such opportunities came their way, the first being the offer from the school's senior management to prepare a song for the school prizegiving. The group were excited by such a possibility and did a small acoustic performance of The Blues Song for one of the school deans. They did not think the song was appropriate for such an event and asked if they had any other songs. Kerry had been working on a riff and had shown it to the band, but it was nowhere near finished. They played a snippet of the song, and were encouraged to work on the song more. One night afterward, Simon and Kerry were staying out at Bevan's place and they spent time working on the track, tentatively called I Never Said I Wanted You. They had the riffs, a first verse, and a wealth of lyrical possibilities, but felt they needed a drum track to make the track fully work. They put it aside intending to return to it. During this time, Simon's father Stuart Perry was involved in a festival that was being organised for the Stratford District Council. Knowing that Simon was involved in a band with his friends, and wanting to give them an opportunity, he offered them a spot playing in the festival. That gave the band something to practice for and they began preparing straightaway. The group started trying to formulate a set that included The Blues Song and Another Brick in the Wall, with newer covers like Poison's Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust and the Screaming Jets' Better. They also started to expand their lineup by inviting Simon's then-girlfriend Kim Braid and Kerry's neighbour Michelle Luke to join in as backing vocalists. The Breakup The band, still nameless, were practicing hard to be ready for the gig which was fast approaching. With the increase of pressure and the relative inexperience of the musicians, the cracks began to show. Simon and Kerry began to get into arguments over seemingly innocuous details, like one time when they got into a heated debate about how the G and C chords from Every Rose Has Its Thorn should be played. Richard, meanwhile, would get frustrated waiting for the two guitarists to finish their lengthy discussions and would begin to start hit his drums while he waited. Bevan was also a learner bass player and would need extensive instruction on songs, lacking the same musical background of the other musicians. All in all, it was a growing powder-keg which was simply waiting to blow. The last straw came one Saturday morning as the band was preparing to have an early practice that weekend. Due at the practice at 10am, Kerry and Bevan (who was staying with Kerry the previous night) woke late and did not arrive to practice until 11am. They found the place empty, but began setting up anyway. Simon and Richard walked in some moments later and were understandably heated. The resulting conversation was short and sharp and Kerry, not handling the situation at all well, ended up packing his things back up and leaving the other three behind. Later that afternoon, Richard and Bevan turned up at Kerry's house and they began talking about what had happened, but no resolution could be reached; the band was over. Beyond the Band 1991 ended and the next year - the final year at Hawera High School for most of the former band members - rolled around. 1992 began with all of the 7th form (year 13) students meeting in the school's AV room to hear from the dean and set their plans for the year and Kerry, Simon, and Bevan spotted 'the new kid' coming in to sit in the row in front of them. Quickly, they all introduced themselves to the new student and took it upon themselves to include him in every thing they could. The student, a rock guitarist as it happened, turned out to be Richard Allen who would ultimately feature heavily in their musical future. Once the year had gotten underway, the band did attempt to reform in some capacity. Early in the year, Simon, Kerry, and Richard meet at Sally Hoogeveen's house for a jam session. The group flirted with the possibility of replacing Bevan for Sally who was an accomplished and experienced bass player. During the jam, they did a very competent sounding rendition of Eric Clapton's Cocaine. While they discussed it and the jam went really well, ultimately the new lineup did not happen. Midway through 1992, in a somewhat non-musical event, three of the former band members, Simon, Kerry, and Bevan, were meant to attend the Hawera High School cross country as part of their school requirements. They chose to run the event in fancy dress with deck chairs and a sun umbrella, sprinting a hundred metres or so and then setting up quickly to applaud the runners, before repeating the process again. Before long, they had been left by most of the runners and quickly realised that walking the course with such heavy objects was going to be rough going. The trio then found a shortcut and cut out about three quarters of the course heading to the finish line. Stopping twenty metres or so before the finish, they set up again and applauded for the runners as they came through. They were encouraged by the Head PE teacher to finish the race first and then set up their little event, but the group could not be moved (and they had cheated, anyway) and so applauded all the runners in. The three members, while unable to play in a band together it seemed, were still able to be clowns all the same. Live: Beyond the RockLords Universe They had one live gig, and ultimately unraveled preparing for a second, and with the relative inexperience of the young group, they never really had a chance to express themselves truly in a live situation. Their one and only performance was one constrained by their growing musicianship and their lack of defining imagery. The stood on stage and delivered their Blues Song much like the raw version recorded by the Gypsys some years later, but with far less tightness. Certainly, the critical eyes of the class spoke volumes, as they perhaps did not appreciate the group with the same fervour as the Dramies would have. It would have ultimately been a far more satisfying gig if they had indeed played a party of their own choosing, for they would have perhaps enjoyed the chance to shake off any restraint and play free of pressure. The Stratford gig, had they have made it, could have also seen them push further, as being able to be united for such an event would have been the making of them. Of the four members, only one went on to a great degree of involvement as a RockLord. Richard, while playing for the Gypsys on numerous occasions, went his own way musically. Bevan stayed closer to the larger group, being one of the key members of Purge, although has perhaps a more shepherded career. Simon continued to play his singer-songwriter style (appearing with the Gypsys years later) and then took his performance to Australia, where not much is known of his musical output there. Kerry, however, became one of the mainstays of the Gypsys, and the lessons he learned through that live performance were foundational. Certainly, his attempted stage antics with his guitar, very much inspired by the Page and Hendrix models he so admired at the time, were ultimately mimicking and without any real understanding of the craft he would eventually discover. Stylemaster: Musical Style Due to the youth of the band's members and rather eclectic make up of their own musical tastes, the band started with a wide range of preferred styles centre on an easy classic rock genre. The two chief contributors to the band, Simon and Kerry, had some crossover of styles, although Simon was largely a more easy listening style of rock - The Beatles and the Eagles - while Kerry was more down the classic rock avenue - Queen and Led Zeppelin. The mix of genres, along with the input from Richard and Bevan, however, worked and they were able to find some good ground for their choosing of covers. Their own original work was so brief, it does make it hard to pin down. The Blues Song is mock-blues, and his so heavily influenced by its comedy, it makes it hard to determine a musical flavour of its own. The way the band played it originally is perhaps more akin to the Gypsys rendition (1995) than it is to the heavier Jamshed version (1996), but its truest form was the acoustic anthem sung by the 'Dramies' which was neither recorded nor directly ran by the band or with them even present. The wildly unfinished Falling Back Again, at the time called I Never Said I Wanted You, was so skeletal that it is difficult to fully ascertain its eventual direction, although it was heading in a very Zeppelin-esque way, something that Kerry tried to emulate as he finished the song in 2002. The riff was certainly suggestive of this, and the words to the first verse (which were the original ones from the BBSB days) have the 70s lilt to them. Legacy: How They Will Be Remembered In the realms of musical history, and even in the RockLords history to a certain extent, the Big Bad Sad Boys themselves are relatively invisible. The real legacy that they hold is in their one creation; that is The Blues Song. The track is, for one, solely responsible for the beginning of Kerry's songwriting career (despite the comedic overtones within the track) and the eventual formation of the Gypsys - a springboard on to the wider RockLords family. Its other significant contribution is the song itself, often overlooked when you call to mind the 'greatest' of the RockLords tracks, yet the song had a following of its own, and generated has arguably the biggest reaction from its fans at the time of release. This was all thanks to the Dramies. After Simon penned the original arrangement, the song was first released into the Hawera High School drama production for that year, and the Dramies took hold of it and sung it like an anthem, the simple melody easily singable, and the jovial lyrics good fun to sing in unison. When the Dramies returned the next year to find a slightly newer, more rounded narrative within the song, they easily picked up the changes (no one could remember the original third verse anyway) and the momentum for the track continued. By the time the Sad Boys had come and gone, the song was in its third year of being sung, three of the now recognised authors (Simon, Kerry, and Bevan - Richard wasn't a Dramie) were in their final year and 1992 would be their last school production. With this 'end of an era' The Blues Song was sung with a volume and poignancy that showed just how big the song had gotten within the Dramie community at the school. This, however, was not the extent of the song's popularity, which could be argued was driven by the authors themselves. Two years later, the 1994 production of Little Shop of Horrors was being performed by the new Dramies, led ably by Justin Clegg, himself in his final year at the school, and a key-member of the classic Dramies from the 1992 era. In the audience for the final show of the season was both Kerry and Bevan, returning to their old stomping grounds, and in the orchestra for the production on drums was Richard, accepted an offer to help out by coming back and drumming for the show. At the end of the performance, which was excellent, Justin came out to see the trio and invited them to come backstage. The trio were understandably nervous about this as a production develops its own tight-knit family, and outsiders are generally excluded - never maliciously, but more because the 'family' becomes so used to it being only them that they are rather unaware. Being invited backstage was, thus, walking into an intensely personal moment for the cast and crew, but Justin had invited them so the accepted. As it was the final night, the cast and crew were making speeches thanking everyone for their participation and handing out little awards. When the ceremonies were all but over, Justin then led the whole cast in crew in a confident rendition of The Blues Song, the lyrics faithfully printed on the whiteboard in the room. The volume and stature of the song showed that they had sung it together many times, and a huge majority of those gathered had no idea that three of the credited authors were in the room, the only one missing was the main author Simon. Speaking afterwards, the trio remarked at how taken aback they were with the rendition, that it really felt like something they had never experienced before, having a room full of strangers sing a complete, honest version of their song. The Blues Song is responsible for so much and, even though the future of the RockLords has gone far beyond that simple track, it is intrinsically woven into its foundation. Origins: The Meanings The band never actually had a name, as their time together was short and perhaps not as focused, the line between band and group of friends somewhat blurred. The group was a few years later given the moniker Big Bad Sad Boys, partially due to a conversation between Kerry and Bevan about what to tag the group as whenever talking about it. Big Bad Sad Boys was certainly better than saying, 'that band we used to be in with those guys at school'. The name harkened back to a basketball team name that Bevan had created for the TV Sports Basketball game on the Amiga 500, one that Bevan and Kerry would play often. (The Big Bad Sad Boys, it must be stated, were a feared team in the league.) Band Members These are the original members of the group that would meet at Simon's house for practices, and played their one and only gig at Hawera High School in 1991: Original Band Members * Simon Perry: Guitars and vocals * Kerry Logan: Guitars and vocals * Richard Brewer: Drums * Bevan Johnson: Bass Outside of the original four, these others had a passing involvement with the group, some musically and some otherwise: Other Band Members * Kim Braid: Backing vocals * Michelle Luke: Backing vocals * Sally Hoogeveen: Bass Other Key People * Andrew McLoughlin: Roadie * David Vink: Roadie * Shane Robinson: Roadie * Stuart Perry: Manager Discography The ''Big Bad Sad Boys were not around long enough to do any recording of any sort, so they have no material of their own to speak of. The two original tracks that they wrote, however, made it into the wider RockLords discography and are presented here.'' * The Blues Song: the 1996 Jamshed recording on the Jamshed and Purge album * The Blues Song: the 1995 Gypsys live recording on their Live at the LeslieDome album * Falling Back Again: the 2002 recording by Kerry Logan that featured on his 2007 album First Key Dates The difficulty here is that, while some of the events have been key, the dates have been long forgotten, since they were never recorded. No one knew at the time that the events would lead to anything beyond itself. 1990 * circa March: Simon and Kerry meet at Simon's house and begin songwriting. * circa mid-year: The Blues Song is debuted at the Man of Steel rehearsals. 1991 * circa mid-year: The Blues Song is re-written and performed at the O' What A Lovely War rehearsals. * circa mid-year: Simon, Kerry, Bevan, and Richard form a band to perform The Blues Song at Hawera High School. * circa October: The band perform The Blues Song and Another Brick in the Wall at Hawera High School. * circa end-of-year: The band break up.] 1992 * circa mid-year: The Blues Song ''is again performed at ''Mr. Cinders ''rehearsals. '''1994' * circa mid-year: The Blues Song ''is performed at the ''Little Shop of Horrors end-of-season ceremony. Distant Future: What Comes Next? While almost all of the RockLords acts have some potential future due to the members of the collective remaining in such constant contact, the likelihood of any official reformation of the Big Bad Sad Boys remains very slim, mostly due to the nature that any such gathering of anything but the full group would more than likely be swallowed into a Gypsys event of some kind (all of the BBSB members being Gypsys too). Kerry is the only fully active RockLord from the band, while Bevan's involvement in the musical output of the group is fairly low, although he is always ready to pickup the bass for any Purge songs that may get played at the often annual Gypsys sessions. Richard travelled to Ohio, USA, and lives there now with his family, while Simon has lived in Australia for a large number of years. Links and Such * The Blues Song - as recorded by Jamshed in 1996